IN THE NATION

MANCHESTER, N. H., Jan. 31—Four years ago yesterday, the great Tet offensive of 1968 began in Vietnam. Eugene McCarthy, then a virtually ignored Presidential candidate, told reporters that if they “give it three weeks” to build, the political repercussions bring him victory in the New Hampshire primary.

Whether or not that kind of lightning strikes for George McGovern, he is acting these days like a man whose long‐shot Presidential campaign is going better than expected. In Massachusetts, Florida, Pennsylvania and New York, Senator McGovern was the victor in caucuses of what he calls “progressive Democrats.” Here in New Hampshire, where he used to have to spell his name for people he asked to see, he believes his campaign has finally registered on the public consciousness. In Iowa, he ran better than expected in delegate‐selection caucuses; in Arizona, he and Mayor Lindsay of New York combined won more state convention delegates than the front runner, Edmund Muskie of Maine. And results in both Iowa and Arizona suggested to Mr. McGovern that Democratic party reforms, in which he had been instrumental, were working.

“I guarantee you,” he said today, “with the kind of support Ed Muskie has among the party regulars, four years ago he'd have wrapped up the whole delegation in those states.”

But if he thought all this was “a pretty good thrust,” Mr. McGovern still maintained his typically earnest air at a luncheon of the Nashua Rotary Club, opened by a thumping Rotarian zendition of “The Hello Song” and featuring excellent beef stew served in white enameled pots.

On the first of 25 scheduled campaign days before the New Hampshire primary on March 7, Mr. McGovern offered his audience two familiar pledges —that as a candidate he never “advocate any course that I don't honestly believe to be the truth” and that as President he never “advocate a course in secret that I'd be ashamed to advocate in public.” Then, under questioning, he added a third pledge, destined to become a fixture of his campaign—that he resign the Presidency if he could not “end the war in a matter of a few months.”

The low‐keyed McGovern manner did not quite camouflage the aggressive campaign necessary to an underdog. He challenged his opponents to debate, to disclose their personal and campaign finances as he plans to do, and to spell out how they pay for the “new priorities” they advocate. In his own case, he pointed out, he has set forth an “alternative” military budget that save nearly $30‐billion for other purposes and a tax reform scheme that make available about $27 billion more.

He expressed disdain for “highpowered television campaigns,” needle for Mayor Lindsay. For Mr. Muskie he brought out the ax. He said he was not asking for “automatic trust,” as Mr. Muskie was with his “Trust Muskie” slogan, but was showing his own trust in the people by outlining the McGovern program in detail. Moreover, he was making no automatic claims on New Hampshire, as was the Senator from neighboring Maine, and he thought it was “a lot more important to know where a candidate stands than where he was born.”

Mr. McGovern warned, moreover, that there was a strong possibility that Eugene McCarthy lead a splinter party movement if the Democrats nominated a candidate “wobbly on ending the war and directing our resources away from this preoccupation with the military”—another challenge to the “Trust Muskie” campaign.

This kind of thing in McGovern's painstaking answers to questions provided meatier stuff than the usual primary speeches, but it aroused little visible steam in the Rotarians—probably a fairly conservative group in Democratic Nashua. Nevertheless, that pointed up the long way the McGovern campaign still has to go.

In New Hampshire they are hoping at best to make Mr. Muskie look weak by running well below the 65 per cent he received in a poll taken among 945 Democrats from Jan. 17 to Jan. 24 and published yesterday in The Boston Globe. Mr. McGovern received 18 per cent and Mayor Sam Yorty of Los Angeles 6, with all the rest splintered.

Mr. McGovern knows the Lindsay candidacy is hurting him in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, where he hopes for victories, and it is small comfort that he thinks Mr. Muskie and Hubert Humphrey hurt each other in the same fashion. He is kicking himself a little for not campaigning harder in Arizona, where aides say he spent only $4,300 against a Lindsay TV blitz, and there is still concern among his staff here; that the McGovern campaign isn't taken seriously enough in New Hampshire, regardless of what may be happening elsewhere.

Still, George McGovern has some reasons to hope that things are picking up. Witness his introduction today by Rotarian Al Davis, who said, “I've only met the man for a few minutes but I think I'm going to change my party—he's great.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Davis felt twinges of Republican loyalty almost immediately. “That's not a promise, Senator,” he added. Which is the way it goes when you're an underdog far from home.

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